Here’s how 5 more schools are innovating and educating

What technology initiatives are other schools and districts proud of?

As the school year gets underway across the nation, many schools and districts are launching new technology initiatives and programs designed to improve teaching and learning.

Educators love to share their successes, learn from the success of other schools and districts, and they also love to share lessons they learned along their journey.

eSchool Media and Xirrus have teamed up on the Innovate to Educate Awards to give a national platform for educators to share what they’re most proud of in their schools or districts. Here, we’ve highlighted the successes of five awards program applicants. Want to apply for the awards? You can do that right here.

[Editor’s note: This is the second part in a series featuring Innovate to Educate applicants. Find the first part here.]

Bordentown Regional SchoolsAmy Wright, Computer Teacher / STEM CoordinatorOne of the district’s top technology initiatives:
For the last 10 years Wright has taught middle school computers. The course was designed to give students in grades 6, 7, and 8 an introduction to Microsoft Office products and file management. It didn’t take long to realize that the students were already doing a lot of this in the younger grades but they didn’t really understand how computers work. So, Wright sought funding to bring Lego NXT robots to our classroom. She redesigned the 6th grade course to introduce students to the basics of computers (identifying hardware, software and the important job of processing instructions). They were immediately hooked! Every child, from every nationality, socio-economic background and every ability was working together to build robots and programming them to solve problems. Along with building robots, they were building confidence and gaining problem solving skills that carried over into math and science classes.